THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 123 



fn seize him. Our people, however, happily escaped them, though they -n-ere many times very near; oue of them, which was upward of 

 20 feet long, came close to one of the boats that was watering, and having seized a large seal instantly devoured it at a nioulhful, and I, 

 myself, saw another of about the same size do the same thing under the ship's stern. (Hawksworth: Voyages: Loudon, 1773; vol. i, i)p. 



87-88.) 



No other mentiou of seals is made by liim here at Masafiiera. 



The voyage of Dampier. — Fifty-seven years prior to (Jhaplain Walter's inspection and description of Juan 

 Ferdandez, Capt. William Dami)ier stopped here, also, to wood and to \yater, and to rally his crew Iroiu scurvy; 

 he was making a "New Voyage Round the World", .sailing from England; he passed two weeks there in these 

 exercises of recuperation and refittiug. The justly celebrated buccaneer delivers himself in this terse strain: 



These [seals] at John Fernandas have fine thick short Fnrre ; the like I have not taken notice of any where but in these Seas. Hero 

 are always thousands, I might possildy say millions of them, cither sitting on the Bays, or going and coming in the sea roinid the Island, 

 ■which is full of them (as they lie at the top of the Water playing and sunning themselves) for a mile or two from the shore. When they 

 come out from the Sea they bleat like Sheep for their young; and though they pass through hundreds of other's young ones before they 

 come to their own, yet they will not suti'er any of them to suck. The young ones are like Puppies and lie much ashore, but when beaten 

 by any af us, they as well as the old ones will make toward the Sea, and swim very swift and nimble ; though on shore they lie very 

 sluggishly, and will not go out of our way unless we beat them, but snap at us. A blow on the Nose soon kills them. Large Ships might 

 here load themselves with Seal Skins and Trane oyl; for they are extraordinary fat. (Dampier: A New Voyage Bound the irorJd, 1683; vtU 

 edition, revised, 1703; vol. i, pp. 88, 90.) 



Dampier, not Cook, first to note the fur seal. — This account of Darapier will be instantly recognized, 

 as far as he speaks of their habits, as an exact portrait of a breeding-rookery of the fur-seal. It is painfully brief, 

 however; but it antedates Steller's contribution to the life and habits of the Callorhimis some 60 years; and is 

 a hundred years nearly in advance of Captain Cook's mentiou of the same subject on the South Georgian (1771) and 

 the Falkland islands (1774). He, therefore, and not Cook, deserves the credit of being the first man to call the 

 attention of the civilized world to the value and the numbers of the fur-seal as it existed in southern waters, while 

 Steller enjoys the same reputation with respect to those of the north.* 



But, after searching through scores of antique traveler's volumes, and reading the musty records through and 

 through — after extended personal intercourse with several of the very men who were active in fur sealing throughout 

 the Antarctic forty years ago, I have nothing but a mass of disjointed and conflicting data to show as to the real 

 number of fur-seals slain in the waters south of the equator ; while the record made by these men of the life and 

 habit of Arctocephnlus australis is that odd medley of fact and fiction, which destroys the value of the one and the 

 romance of the other. 



The Falkland islands: Their discovery. — Captain John Davies, an Englishman, and a companion of Sir 

 Thomas Cavendish, who made a privateersmau's voyage to the South seas in 1592, was the first person who saw 

 the Falkland islands. In 1591:, Sir Richard Hawkins lauded upon them and called them in honor of his queen iind 

 himself, "Hawkiiivs' Maiden-land"; he said nothing about seals. In 1.398 they were seen by a Dutch squadron, 

 Verhagen, and Sebald de Wert commanding; they touched, and, ignorant of prior discovery, named them "Sebald's 

 islands". Captain William Dampier, an Englishman, nearly 100 years after, in 1686, visited them and styled thera 

 '■Sibbet de Wards"; he does not speak of seals there. They were finally called the Falkland islands by Strong, an 

 English navigator in 1689 ; the manuscript journal of Strong yet remains unpublished and filed away in the archives 

 of the British Museum. Captain Cook's emphatic mention of the fur-seal at South Georgia in 1771 gradually drew 

 the attention of fur-sealers to a focus, when, from 1801 to 1810, inclusive, the whole Antarctic sealing-grouiul was 

 ravaged by them, and the Falkland islands were the head center of all their operations. Great Britain took 

 immediate jurisdiction, for the first time, over the Falkland islands in 1S33. 



Extraordinary' absknce of sealing data. — Such, in brief, are the circumstances that attended the early 

 discovery of these celebrated Falkland islands, which were the rendezvous of a large sealing-fleet for a period of 

 nearly 30 years — 1800 to 1820, inclusive; yet, in spite of it, I can find little or no evidence of the extent of the 

 catch thereon, or of the general location of the vast rookeries known to be slaughtered here during that extended 



''William Dampier was the boldest and clearest-headed navigator, of all who then sailed into unknown seas. He discovered 

 Australia a century before Cook saw it, cruising at that time as a buccaneer; his narrative gave IJefoe the idea and supplied the iiici<lents 

 of " Robiu.son Crusoe", on Juan Fernandez; and there is no question in my mind that he possessed those qualities which distinguished 

 Captain Cook, to the fullest extent ; he only lacked the power of the government behind him, to have made a much earlier record, and 

 entirely as meriiorious as is the one which Cook left for posterity. 



Although Dampier gives the lirst sensible and positive description of the fur-seal that I can find, yet there is one reference to this 

 animal much earlier ; but it requires the reading of an expert to notice that it arose from the sight of a fur-seal. It is found in the account 

 of Henry Braiier, or Brewer, who, in behalf of the Dutch West India Company, landed on the coast of Staten Land, ilth March, ICI'i, en 

 route to Chili. Here, at Valentine's bay, he " saw among the rocks several sea-lions and sea-dogs, about the bigness of a good European 

 calf; some of a grayish, some of a brownish color, making a noise not unlike our sheep, and at the approach of our men they betook 

 the^iselves to the sea." [Churchill: Voyages: London, 1700: vol. i, p. 450.] As the fur-seal is the only one of its family th.it makes a 

 "nui.se not unlike our sheep", there is no question that Henry Brewer saw a number of female Arcloeephalus australis, in especial; though 

 males were along, they being .so much larger, he deemed diti'erent, and termed them sea-lions 



Juan Fernandez, the Spanish navigator and adventurer, who, in ir)63-'()7, discovered, pre-empted, and colonized the island of his 

 name, died there in 1575, or thereabouts; with his decease, the settlement was abandoned. He, probably, was the first of all civilized 

 men to really know what a fur-seal ^^■as; l>ul he has left no record, to my knowledge, of the fact. 



